There was a huge event this weekend in Eddystone.
Nearly 10,000 gathered for the fourth annual Overdose Awareness Walk in the borough, a way of again focusing the spotlight on the horrific toll that the opioid epidemic is taking on our communities every day.
But there is one person who was not there.
We weren't.
Several people noticed.
And several of them reached out to me and our Facebook page asking why we did not cover this year's event.
It's a perfectly legitimate question.
First, let me preface that by saying we have offered extensive coverage of previous year's events, including a couple of times when it was out lead Sunday story.
That does not change the fact that we could not get there Saturday.
I wish we had.
The truth is I just was not able to get a person there Saturday.
Luckily, I learned that a freelancer was there on Saturday. She took some photos and did a short story.
You can read that story here.
But I was touched by something that a person posted on our Facebook page.
He pointed out that this was the real story that should be told about the heroin and opioid epidemic.
"We are the faces of this disease, not the dirty needle or spoon you post," he said. That's a reference to the way we sometimes address the issue on our Facebook page.
It's a point Brian Corson, the CEO of MVP Recovery, one of the county's leading rehab centers, talked about at a recent opioid forum in Parkside. He agreed that putting those images on the front page is sometimes a problem for people still struggling to beat their addiction. I have tried to avoid displaying them in that fashion since.
But I missed a chance to cover another aspect of the story Saturday.
And for that I am sorry.
"But hey, 9,000 people showed up without u or the news media," the person said on Facebook.
Good for them.
By the way, you can read our folo story here.
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